This blog is dedicated to all things Frank – past, present and future.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Stretch Arm Strong (1991-1992)

In April of '91 I started jamming again with Kevin Purcell and John Hoffman. The years had past since we were in Barking Spiders(here) and we became better musicians so we started writing more intricate songs. We called ourselves Stretch Armstrong, after the 1970's doll. It started off as casual but by summer we decided to get serious and find a singer. For the first time we chose to go outside our circle of friends and put an ad in a local music paper. Jim Burns (Barking Spiders singer) was shuffling off to Buffalo State College, otherwise I'm sure he would've been our man.

After numerous auditions we settled on Dean Mastrantoni (a.k.a. Dean Drillbit). Dean had different influences than us. He came from a goth/new wave background, while we were punk rock. With Dean's influences we became more of a goth-rock band, which we were comfortable with...at first.

We tweaked our name to three words – Stretch Arm Strong – and recorded our first demo tape in February of '92 on a 4-track recorder in my basement. Looking back I wish Kevin and I eased up on the chorus pedal a bit...but that was the early 90's sound. With the tape we booked a bunch of shows at small local venues. In August of '92 we recorded seven more songs on 4-track in my basement but by then Dean and I were at constant odds so we soon called the whole thing off.